Sony has filed a patent for a method of backwards compatibility. Supposedly, the newly devised system -- as authored by Mark Cerny, the guy who designed the PlayStation 4 -- will allow the PS5 to run all previous PlayStation software. And yes, in theory, that covers PSone, PS2, PS3, and PS4 games.

Too good to be true? Well, possibly, but that's why it's a patent. As we all know by this point, companies like Sony register patents all the time, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they'll ever be applied in reality. Still, this one's a very interesting find, especially since the PS5 is just around the corner.

A proposed flowchart for the system

The technical side of this supposed backwards compatibility system sounds pretty crazy. Essentially, it allows the machine -- the PS5, in this case -- to mimic the behaviour of previous consoles using multiple processors. In other words, when an old game is booted up, the PS5 "tricks" the software into thinking that it's running on its original device. Again, it sounds rather ambitious.

We've been saying for a while now that we think the PS5 has to be backwards compatible -- at least with PS4 games -- and honestly, we reckon that it's on the cards. It makes sense for your library of titles to carry forward from here on in, especially with the likes of Sony pushing for a digital future. You're already a part of that ecosystem if you own a PS4, after all.

As always, though, this is another case of waiting to see what happens. Keep your eyes peeled for most stories like this one throughout 2019, as it's about to get wild.

Robert's been a dedicated PlayStation fan since the days of Tekken 2, and he still loves a good dust up. When he's not practising combos, he's usually getting lost in the latest 100-hour RPG, or, y'know, replaying The Witcher 3.

Also, if this did have the possibility of being in the works, it raises a few flags for me:(1) PS5 is gonna be expensive AF if it can emulate all past PS consoles (see: PS3 at launch). I'd be fine if it just plays PS4 and PS5 games.

(2) I hope if they are including that functionality that it does not come at the expense of the system being significantly down on overall power compared to, say, the next Xbox or the SMS Madbox, if that thing ever sees the light of day.

Maybe they put in the processor from the fat PS3 that could play all PS1, PS2 and PS3 games- on top of a new processor for PS5 and PS4 games? So when you put in the disc - it would switch between the two different processors depending on which disc you put in

@Zombie9ers the PS3 processor could never play PS1 and PS2 games, PS1 games were emulated and the old Phat PS3's actually had the PS2 emotion engine in them that allowed them to play PS2 games, that's why it was so expensive at launch, they then removed the Emotion Engine to reduce the price thus losing PS2 BC while it could still play most PS1 games

I think full PlayStation library compatibility should be possible considering you can emulate PS3 games on an AMD Ryzen APU which will most likely find it's way into the ps5.If so the next question is, will it have a disc drive and will off disc emulation be supported?

Given that the PS5 is going to be using the same architecture as PS4, I'm surprised people are still even entertaining the notion that it might not be backwards-compatible with PS4.

On the other hand, IF PS5 is capable of providing PS3 compatibility, it will be via software emulation... which would seem to indicate that the PS5 may have some serious grunt; even top-spec PCs running RPCS3 can't run them smoothly without major optimisation for each game.

@jdv95 Doesn't mean it won't be... just means that you'd be able to get them digitally, which would be great for people who never had a PS3 since a lot of games will probably become hard to find on disc.

If its BC with all playstation consoles surely that would include vita and psp too?

I wonder if that could hint at a portable component, even if the console itself will firmly remain a tv based experience. The sales of switch, which is currently selling faster than ps4 at this stage of its life (apparently), wont have gone unnoticed.

It has to at least be fully backwards compatible with PS4. If Sony can somehow manage to get PS1, 2 and 3 in there as well, all the better. And if I could transfer over the PSone and 2 classics I bought off PSN during last gen that'd be icing on the cake.

@Paranoimia@Cutmastavictory@Gamer83@Number09@Spectra people, my peeps, forget about ps3. That thing can't be had without dedicated hardware and Sony is not making their ps5 cost $1000 just to check that checkmark.Software emulation is off the table as well - if it was viable Sony would use it themselves for ps now ps3 games instead of having server "blades" that are each a ps3. Whenever you spin up a ps3 game on ps now a dedicated hardware ps3 on a server board powers up. What is for sure happening is 100% backwards compatibility with ps4. Whatever ps4 can run, ps5 will too. This patent is nothing new. They, of course, will need a way to trick old software into "thinking" it's running on the good ole' ps4.

Why wouldn't you let people buy games from 10-20 years ago? It should be a no brainer if the technology allows it. I think BC with PS4 is a given, but if it's BC with all playstation consoles, that will be major.

I don't think Sony will turn their backs to the x86 architecture, which would make running PS4 games on the PS5 as easy as running older PC games on newer machines. Certainly the PS5 will be powerful enough to have spot-on emulators for the PS1 and 2, even improved versions. But that PS3 though... I'd still keep a couple of them as I don't see anyone being able to tame and emulate that beast anytime soon, and I don't think Sony would risk to include a Cell/RSX combo in the PS5. They surely must have learned their lesson with the PS3 launch

@Neolit Yup, I know that. Personally, I'm not a someone who has generally cared about backwards compatibility with any of the previous systems. I still have my PS3, but have barely used it since I got PS4; I didn't use my PS2 after I got my PS3; and I didn't use my PS1 after I got my PS2. I just don't tend to go back to old platforms, as - with very few exceptions in my personal opinion - the games seem ugly and clunky within a very short space of time after using the newer systems.

That said being said, the difference between generations is getting smaller and smaller each time, so I probably would play PS4 games on a PS5... especially titles like Horizon, Uncharted 4, Driveclub, etc.

But this patent shows that such a feature is at least in Sony's mind, regardless of whether it comes to fruition; I know, patents are often used to protect ideas, and do not necessarily mean that something is in development. Software emulation isn't necessarily off the table, though I agree that it seems very unlikely... I've said myself many times before, including in comments on this site, that it would not be possible without an extremely powerful system, which would mean it's pretty much incompatible with the notion of an affordable games console.

But on the subject of 'affordable', that could be another reason for Sony to be seriously looking at this - those 'blades' probably aren't cheap for them to maintain, they won't last forever, and the more PS Now subs they get, the more they need. Emulation, if they can pull it off at any point, in any way, would make a lot of sense for them.

And with that being said, I do feel that if anyone is capable of devising a method of doing it, it's Cerny.

@Octane you like their flow charts? So do I. Especially the ones that state it’ll have 16G of ram. And 12 or more TFLOPS. A plan for ray tracing. And forget the GPU (well don’t but....) we want a high enough cpu! Bandwidth and blah blah blah! That’s the chart I wanna see.......

@Amppari no matey. PS3 too for sure. And those ps2 gems. Plus, if all games can be upscailed to today’s graphics and speed (60FPS) then I would even break out the ps1 games and try wipeout, colony wars and G Police......

@Kiloman74 Trust me, I would LOVEEEE to be able to play my PS3 library on PS5, but from a tech prospective, I don't see how they'd emulate that cell architecture without adding an actual cell chip somewhere. Even high end PCs still can hardly run PS3 games via emulator. It's certainly possible Sony has some secret sauce to do it, but I'm skeptical. I mean just look at how terrible the PS1 classic was.

PS1 and PS2 are a lot easier to emulate due to a much more similar architecture. There's nothing remotely close to PS3 when it comes to actual hardware design. Even with the vastly superior processing power of a PS4 Pro, it's difficult to simulate the instruction sets of cell and costs a lot of overhead.

This is actually very topical with ARM and x86 architecture right now with mobile devices. Trying to get x86 applications to run on ARM requires either hours of optimization (re-writing applications in some situations) or a lot of overhead to convert from one to the other.

@Turismo4GT@Turismo4GT look. I said ages ago that Sony better make two machines. A cheaper version and the Daddy version. You know for a fact, that gamers will go for the hardcore machine and parents and the un-clued up will buy the cheaper version. I would always buy the expensive model even if it’s priced at 500! And no thatthe next machines will be more expensive to make, so might be expensive to buy. Microsoft is definitely going this route and I think their next machine might be more powerful than the ps5. I would pay through the roof to get the more powerful machine that beats the second Xbox. I’m a working man after all.........

My DREAM is to be able to buy a PlayStation that plays all my PS1 & PS2 & PS3 & PS4 & Future PlayStation game discs I won't get to excited tho because I can't see it ever happening + the thing is if anyone can do it then it's SONY that could do it. Oh well.

@Turismo4GT naw, you don't have all the facts. ps3 was so expensive because it had the ps2 emotion chip inside — that allowed the user to run ps2 games natively on the early ps3 models. on top of that, the cell processor of the ps3 made it expensive in its own right as that was new technology and supply was limited. if ps5 is b/c with all generations of playstation, it will do so via emulation... ps5 will be powerful enough to emulate ps1 and ps2 games with ease... ps3 will always be a challenge, even for powerful hardware, but sony likely wrote a tight code for such a task. ps4 will be b/c natively and will not emulate since it will run the same architecture as ps5. price will not go beyond $500 in most markets. that said, i have a feeling not all games from playstation history will be compatible... perhaps sony will curate a select number of games on psn that run when it comes to ps2 and ps3 in particular... i mean, how could a single emulator be compatible with over 5000 physical games? that's not likely to happen... ps1 games 100% compatibility could be possible since the emulator can just brute force those no problem

@NathanUC damn thanks man! Love the response and I now understand. You a tech wiz yes? Ok. I’ll say this one last time! I think Sony better make sure that the ram is 16G. And that the TFLOPS will be 12 plus. A high enough (fast?) cpu. And plans for ray tracing. Wow, all this and games are running in 4K 60? Can Sony’s machine be future proof for 8K? Can the will the ps5 upscale old games to 8K?

x86-64 in an instruction set, not an architecture. there are huge variations in how the instruction set can be executed, and the jaguar CPU in PS4 is completely different from RyZen (or whatever is likely to end up in PS5). there's a line that states "focused on eliminating the synchronization errors between the new consoles and the behavior of the previous ones". the jaguar CPU uses OoO and speculative execution, the newest AMD CPUs use SMT. the patent looks like its for some kind of compatibility layer - it will translate calls from one system to another system (kind of like running windows applications on linux). a software compatibility layer for PS4 to PS5 is plausible (whether it comes to fruition or not), but from PS3 to PS5 has serious difficulties - the PPE and SPEs in the Cell both use RISC, not x86, and the way the SPEs are chained together for complex operations will be extremely difficult to translate with software - can't see how they can getbdecent PS3 b/c without a hardware compatibility layer.

personally not too bothered if it has PS4 backwards compatibility or not, i don't buy many games digitally, and there's really nothing i'd play again, and i have no backlog to carry forward. i'd be more likely to play PS3 games.

I hope ps5 can also acted like a pc but in terms of gaming. Once a new technology come it can always upgraded with a piece of chip to upgrade the power, not like if we have a ps4 we have to buy a whole new console to get the power of pspro. And ps5 could connect to keyboard so we could play games like flight sim or xplane on ps5

Backwards compatibility is a must with the PS4 at least and if they can pull of previous generations then this will be a must buy for me at least. It can't be beyond the realms of possibility as doesn't the Xbox do this already with its VGPU, which imitates a 360 and even has it's OS built in. Imagine the PS5 enhancing all of those old titles, modern and retro gaming built into one console is a great proposition

@leucocyte I've always wondered how expensive it would be to throw in a legacy console just for BC. Would it be expensive to have it run PS1 and PS2 games natively for example. It's old tech at this point, so it should be cheap, but I don't think it used widely anymore, which could make it more expensive than it needs to be...

@Kiloman74 if Sony offered 2 versions just because someone would buy the cheaper version doesn't make the "un-clued" especially if the only reason the other was more expensive is because it has backwards compatibility, i never sell my systems so i don't need BC so i would get the cheaper option

not to mention some people have a tight budget so again that doesn't make them "un-clued"

@FullbringIchigo Right. I said somewhere else and I'll say it again here that if they did release two machines I could see myself going for the spartan version depending upon features, of course. Been gaming 30+ years...

Point I'm making is regarding BC primarily, obviously. If (when) I buy a PS5 it's because I'm making the move to immerse myself in the future, not the past. I'm certainly not disregarding anybody else who wants that ability from the machine to attend to the user desire to play older titles but I don't want it and would rather not pay for it.

"The technical side of this supposed backwards compatibility system sounds pretty crazy. Essentially, it allows the machine — the PS5, in this case — to mimic the behaviour of previous consoles using multiple processors. In other words, when an old game is booted up, the PS5 "tricks" the software into thinking that it's running on its original device. Again, it sounds rather ambitious."

As long as I can play my physical and downloaded games from PS4 to PS5 I will be happy. Hopefully that’s how the eco system will follow into the future especially where download games are concerned. This is what gets on my nerves, sometimes u end up purchasing the same games over and over with each gen, this has to end.

@Turismo4GT It wouldn't really be any more expensive. For PS1, 2, and 3 they'd be using emulation, and for PS4 games the PS5 is gonna run on the same x86 architecture so they won't need to fit in any PS4 hardware like the PS3 did with PS2 hardware initially.

@Neolit PS3 emulation isn't as difficult as you suggest, it runs pretty well on a mid range Ryzen set up; far from perfect but a lot of games run really well. An official emulator would fare even better, even if the PS5 is also based on a mid range Ryzen chipset.

@Orpheus79V my position was never that ps3 emulation is difficult or impossible. My position is that it's prohibitively costly (in cpu and gpu terms) which will translate to prohibitively costly hardware.Here's hoping that you are right and I am wrong as that would mean I could get rid of all my ps3s and ps4s come ps5

@Neolit In all fairness, I do believe that if it were to happen, it'd be more akin to how the Xbox One handles back-compat where they drip feed games that have been specifically optimized on an individual basis rather than just letting you pop in anything, at least for the PS3 games. So I'd say you're likely a bit more correct on this one.

@Orpheus79V Microsoft is not "drip feeding" those xb360 games for any other reason than this:
They are pretty much recompiling the old games to be able to work on new hardware. Sure, there is an emulation wrapper as well but it is a remastering process nevertheless. So what Microsoft should really be applauded for is for giving away remasters (with a nice touch of using original xb360 disk as a license key for the new binaries to be downloaded and installed) rather than charging for them.